Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates, Fourth Edition

Deciding on Resolution 55
Looking at the right-hand side of the screenshot in Figure 3.5, there is a column
of advertisements that the user is probably not going to be as interested in.
When dropped down to a lower resolution, the column to the right is no longer
visible. However, the main content to the left is still viewable.
Designing a site in this manner is a smart and easy way to address monitors with
lower resolutions. It is generally good practice to show a little of the right-hand
column so that the low-resolution user knows that there is more information
available by scrolling to the right.
Designing Fixed versus Relative Sites
A site designed for a lower resolution will not dynamically resize to fit the screen
of a monitor with a larger resolution, but it can stretch horizontally to at least fill
the full width. These kinds of pages, which use this relative resizing to fit a screen,
are called relative or jello pages. Figures 3.7 through 3.9 are the same site viewed
at the resolutions of 640 480, 800 600, and 1024 768.
Figure 3.7
Relative site at 640 480 resolution.